The invention relates to a magazine for receiving at least one bone screw.
The invention also relates to a bone plate having such a magazine mounted thereon.
Bone plates normally have several screw-in openings through which bone screws are screwed in order to fix the bone plates to bone parts. Screwing-in these bone screws may prove difficult because the surgical sites are often not easy to access and, in the majority of cases, the bone screws are relatively short. There is therefore a risk of the bone screws being misaligned. There is also a risk of dropping a bone screw within the surgical site and of then having to search for it laboriously.
It is known to place guide sleeves on bone plates in order to impart guidance to the bone screws while these are being screwed in. For example, a bone plate is described in US 2006/0149250 A1, wherein sleeve-shaped guides can be screwed into the screw-in openings and then have to be individually removed from the screw-in openings again after the bone screws have been screwed in. A precondition of this construction is that the screw-in openings have a screw-in thread for the guide sleeves. This therefore involves relatively high constructional expenditure. Also, the removal of the guide sleeves is laborious as a corresponding guide sleeve has to be screwed out of each screw-in opening.
A template is described in US 2005/0177163 A1, which can be placed on a bone plate using a handle. This template has guide openings for bone screws. After the bone screws have been screwed in, the template can be removed again in its entirety from the bone plate using a handle. Difficulties are also encountered with use of this known construction as the bone screws have to be inserted into the guide openings of the template. This may also be problematic at surgical sites that are difficult to access.
The object of the invention is to provide a magazine for receiving at least one bone screw, with which the screwing of a bone screw into a bone plate is facilitated.